


Domino

by cobalamincosel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Complicated Relationships, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Makeup Sex, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24852211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel
Summary: It’s been a month and two days since he and Johnny called it quits, not that Kun is counting or anything.(He totally is. No one tell Ten.)It’s been difficult. Granted, he hadn’t thought about what the fallout would be. This isn’t the first time he and Johnny have broken up, but this felt more final.Or at least it had when Kun had been in this apartment last.It had, for a while. Except that right now he’s in Johnny’s apartment at 11:49 pm and it’s definitely too late for this to be anything but what it seems like it will be.
Relationships: Suh Youngho | Johnny/Qian Kun
Comments: 64
Kudos: 303





	Domino

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunalius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunalius/gifts), [wentz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wentz/gifts).



> I've been in a breakup fic kick lately and a lot of that has to do with wanting to explore the different ways in which people wrangle the end of love, in contrast to the mutual pining I often write so much of. 
> 
> This fic is for D and Emi, who are the two Johnkunists closest to my heart. I'm sorry this is a little sad, but I hope you like it regardless. :) I love you both.
> 
> An immense thank you to my homies who helped me with ideas and the direction of this fic. 💖 Your feedback was so valuable in me finishing this. 
> 
> I know song titles as fic titles can feel like such a cop-out but this was really all I could think about, so the title is from Wayv's song of the same name.

It’s been a month and two days since he and Johnny called it quits, not that Kun is counting or anything. 

(He totally is. No one tell Ten.) 

It’s been difficult. Granted, he hadn’t thought about what the fallout would be. This isn’t the first time he and Johnny have broken up, but this felt more final. 

Or at least it had when Kun had been in this apartment last.

It had, for a while. Except that right now he’s in Johnny’s apartment at 11:49 pm and it’s definitely too late for this to be anything but what it seems like it will be. 

Kun’s pissed at himself, a little, but not enough to want to put his shoes back on. Not enough to tell Johnny this is a bad idea, and that he shouldn’t have invited himself over. Not enough to tell Johnny that he shouldn’t have said yes to Kun inviting himself over, no questions asked. 

They aren’t even talking, not really. Just these little perfunctory “How are you’s” and “How’s school’s” and shit. It isn’t great. 

This is such a bad fucking idea. 

But God, he’s so weak. He is so fucking weak because Johnny is padding around his apartment barefoot, still in his clothes from the day, just a cotton shirt and faded jeans on, and Johnny looks like he’s spent the month working out instead of home and depressed over their breakup the way Kun has. Johnny looks so good and Kun misses him so much, and that’s what’s landed them in this situation in the first place. 

Kun watches him walk around the little studio apartment, watches Johnny walk over to the black Bose speakers he has perched on top of his television, balancing his laptop in one hand so that the Bluetooth can connect and the lo-fi beats start filtering softly through the room. Kun’s got cold wine in his glass, and he keeps swirling it around to give him something to do. 

Kun’s regretting this decision minute by minute, which sucks because he thought he’d done a pretty solid job of trying to piece himself together since November (questionable), and also his fucking rideshare had cost an arm and a leg. Johnny lives like 40 minutes away from him, and that’s assuming that the traffic is cooperating. It’s storming outside, so it had taken Kun thirty minutes longer to arrive, and by the time he’d gotten to Johnny’s lobby, all his bravado had run out. 

He doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s doing here or what he expected would happen. Or, well, okay, he did have an idea of what he expected but he knows that if he had told Ten or anyone about what he was planning to do, they would have shamed him or screamed at him, or something, and an hour and a half ago, nothing could have deterred him. 

See, he’d thought that and Johnny had a good run. Grad school’s taken too much out of the both of them, and they didn’t seem to have the same vision of the future together, and when Johnny had told him that he didn’t think this was going to work out, that he needed time on his own to not date anyone and that Kun deserved someone better than him, Kun had begged him to think about it, had actually gotten on his knees to get Johnny to stay before Johnny had gotten this panicked look in his eyes and pulled Kun up and said, “You never, never beg anyone to stay like that.” 

It’s fucked cos Kun had thought they’d be okay, even if their breakup had ended in a fight. Like, they’re friends, and he’d hoped that making the transition from friend to boyfriend back to friend would be seamless. Kun’s kind of obsessed with the idea of them not being like _most_ exes. He’s wanted them to be better than that, above that. He wants so desperately for them to be okay. 

But Kun also so desperately wants them to go back to what they were before this breakup. 

He wonders if Johnny feels the same way, if the fact that he said yes to Kun coming over is any indication. 

Thing is, he has no idea what else there is to talk about. Not right now anyway, not in this moment. Not anything he’s ready for.

“Is the wine okay? Do you want anything else? I still have whiskey,” Johnny says, rummaging through the overhead pantry and pulling the half-empty bottle out before pausing.

That whiskey belongs to Kun. He’d forgotten about it, and clearly so had Johnny. 

“Yeah, bring it over,” Kun says, downing the rest of his wine. “I’ll just use this glass.” 

“Okay,” Johnny says, setting the bottle down gently next to Kun’s phone and then returning to the refrigerator to grab a pitcher of water for the both of them. 

They spend the next quarter-hour sitting together without speaking, just sharing the whiskey slowly while Johnny’s soft music plays in the background. Kun swallows down another mouthful.

“So, have you started seeing anyone?” Kun asks, blunt as always. Johnny hates this about him, and Kun sees how Johnny’s fingers tighten around the glass and worries that the amber liquid will burst through. 

“No, Kun, I haven’t started seeing anyone yet,” Johnny replies, his voice tight. “Why?”

“Nothing,” Kun replies, glancing at his own empty glass. The whiskey will be hitting soon. It’s his favorite liquor, but he’s never really been able to build a tolerance for it. He’s two servings in cos he’s nervous, and he’s sure that one more will mean that not only will he no longer have control over his faculties, and he already barely has any control over his fucking mouth. 

“I know you, that wasn’t a ‘nothing’ question, Kun,” Johnny says. He sounds tired, though Kun can’t tell if he’s tired of Kun, or tired from the day, or both. It’s fair since it’s true. Kun’s never been the type to ask ‘nothing’ questions. There’s always something. 

“Curiosity, mostly,” Kun acquiesces. “Is it so wrong that I wanna know? You were my boyfriend for almost two years. I think I’m allowed to be curious.” 

“Okay, you’re right, you’re perfectly within your rights to be curious,” Johnny replies, sipping at his own glass of whiskey, before taking his mug and drinking water like it’s a chaser. John had always sworn that it made the whiskey go down smoother. Kun had never understood it. “How about you?”

Kun raises a shoulder, and then drops it. 

“One date with some second year,” Kun replies, unable to keep the mild gloating out of his voice, even if the date had been a disaster and the guy had cum without giving a shit about Kun, and Kun had jacked off to Johnny’s old sexts when he’d gotten home. Johnny does not need to know this at all. 

“Oh?” Johnny’s always been terrible at hiding his emotions from Kun, and Kun picks up on the lilt of jealousy that he’s sure Johnny is working very hard to modulate. 

“Yeah,” Kun says, all pretend nonchalant. “He was okay.” He wasn’t, but Kun’s trying to push buttons here. 

Johnny takes another sip of whiskey and sets the glass down, and even if he’s trying to control it, Kun knows that there was more force to it than normal. Kun smiles to himself a little. 

The thing about going through a breakup is that you’re always keeping score. Or at least, in Kun’s head, he’s been keeping score. Who’s doing better? Who’s getting over who faster? Who’s dealing the next blow harder?

They’re in this weird precarious space really where they’re supposed to be broken up, but they’re still texting each other once in a while, attempting to be friends and then low-key sniping at each other every so often. Nothing has encompassed his relationship status more than the old Facebook adage of “It’s Complicated”.

“What are you doing here, Kun?” Johnny asks, finally. 

Kun doesn’t exactly have an answer, more like a whole lot of non-answers. He’s sure Johnny knows that Kun doesn’t know, either, but Johnny’s still gonna wait. It’s always been like that. 

“What do you think, Johnny?” Kun asks, refilling his whiskey, not making eye contact. 

Johnny sighs, irritated, “Don’t give me that. Not now--”

“I don’t know, okay?” Kun interjects, looking up at Johnny. He needs to leave. Or say something. Anything. Or leave. Or actually tell the truth. “I was out with some friends and I heard a stupid song that you used to love and I texted you and now I’m here.”

Johnny’s quiet, fiddling with the glass in hands. He doesn’t speak for a long while.

“I miss us too, you know,” Johnny says quietly.

Kun doesn’t expect the spike of pain that passes through his gut at this confession. It is the choice of “us” versus “you”. It’s the fact that more than anything, the one thing Kun has wanted to say the most for a month now has been “I miss you.” 

The words fill inside his throat like that one video he’d seen of some stupid fucking YouTuber who tried to flush his Orbeez down the drain in France.

_I miss you. I miss your body. I miss how your body fits against mine. I miss you singing in the mornings when you prepare your coffee. I miss arguing with you about Star Wars. I miss arguing with you about the future. I miss having something more than whatever the fuck we are now._

“I didn’t know,” Kun says instead. He takes a sip. Chases it with another. He’s not anywhere near tipsy, not really, but he’s close enough to being brave. He’ll take what he can get, he supposes. “Good to know I’m not alone in feeling that way.” 

Johnny rests his elbows on the table and buries his face in his hands before pushing them back, running fingers through his hair. It’s red and floppy, falling over his face again until Kun reaches out and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear. Kun wills himself to not let his traitorous hand linger.

“I like this color on you,” Kun says, pulling his hand back. “It suits you.” 

Johnny’s looking at him, watching him closely.

“The blue was a decision,” Johnny says, nodding to Kun’s hair, curly where he’d styled it earlier. “It’s the boldest thing I’ve ever seen you do.” 

“Breakups change people, I guess,” Kun says, flippant. Johnny rolls his eyes, and huffs a fond sort of laughter, but it dies as soon as it leaves Johnny’s mouth. 

“Yeah,” Johnny says. “It’s nice though. We’re kind of like James and Jesse right now.” 

Kun laughs. “So Leon is Meowth?” 

At the mention of his name, Johnny’s Abyssinian cat totters out of Johnny’s bedroom, the silver bell around his neck tinkling lightly as he runs and jumps up into Kun’s lap in one fluid motion. Kun nearly weeps with joy. 

“Hi baby,” he says, rubbing the cat’s head between his pointy ears, a small meow erupting from his mouth. “You missed me too, huh?”

Leon nuzzles Kun’s hand, and Kun, for one, is grateful for the momentary respite, before Leon hops off again and runs toward the kitchen for his water. 

“Yeah, looks like he’s Meowth,” Johnny huffs a laugh. 

Sure, Kun had come here thinking that maybe he and Johnny would maybe fuck, and Kun would just deal with the regret of it later. Or, they’d fuck, and then get back together, like the second time they’d “broken up” over some stupid shit at a party where Kun had thought Johnny was making eyes at someone else. 

Kun had chased him down the street in tears, and Johnny had turned to him and said, “You clearly don’t trust me, so why are we still doing this?”

 _Doing this,_ like it had been an exercise and not a relationship. 

The other thing about breakups is that you have no choice but to face the movie reel that plays in your head of the other person even when you’re already trying to move on with your day. 

“The month’s been like a fog to me,” Kun says quietly. “I’m not falling apart, not when it comes to the important stuff. I’m turning in my papers. I’m getting to class on time. It’s when the day’s over and I get home and Doyoung is out with Taeyong that I remember that I should be out with you but I’m not and then I feel like I’m back to square one.” 

Johnny looks up at Kun, his eyes searching Kun’s face for something. There’s a sad downturn to Johnny’s lips that makes Kun ache something awful. 

“I’m sorry that I’m the reason for it, Kun,” Johnny says. He’s slumped over the table a bit. Terrible posture, this boy. Kun remembers poking his back countless times, telling him he was a shrimp, to straighten up. “I meant it when I told you you deserved to be with someone who isn’t a mess like me.” 

Kun purses his lips. Johnny’s hand is right there, and he could take it. It’s just within reach, but he doesn’t know if that would be welcome. 

“I think you should have let me make that decision for myself instead of having done it for me,” Kun says. “That was incredibly unfair of you to have done that.”

Johnny exhales, long and loud, the air hissing through his teeth. Some fucking bossa nova song starts playing from Johnny’s speakers, and it’s certainly the worst mood music for this conversation, but Kun is grateful for anything that fills the void in between their words. 

“Kun, you had a ten-year step-by-step plan and I just wanted to keep hanging out with you, take it a day at a time,” Johnny says. “I don’t even know what I’m going to do with my art history degree yet, but it’s too late for me to back out now. I don’t have plans. I just--I wing half the things I do, which you’re well aware of, and which I’m well-aware you hate.” 

“I don’t hate that--”

“You do.” 

“Okay, I do, but,” Kun frowns at his glass. “I don’t hate you.” 

“What do we do when there are parts of me you hate? Those things still make up the whole, Kun,” Johnny says, but there’s no bite in his voice. 

“You can still love someone and hate parts of them and deal,” Kun replies quietly. “I was willing to deal, Johnny. You’re the one who decided to take yourself out of the equation.” 

This just feels like an iteration of their last fight, but calmer. More put together. A little more sullen, but at least they’re not shouting at each other and throwing daggers meant to hurt. At least he isn’t on his knees begging Johnny to reconsider. 

Kun closes his eyes and rubs his fingers to his temple. He’s rehashed that fight in his head so many times now that he’s starting to wonder if it was all real or if the memory has just gotten harsher as time has passed. He’s not entirely sure. 

It’s the hand on his wrist that startles Kun out of the momentary reverie that he’s fallen under. Johnny’s hand is warm, a counterpoint to the cold glass in Kun’s hand.

“I’m sorry that I hurt you,” Johnny says. “I’m sorry that I got scared off. We’re just so _young,_ Kun. You were talking about moving in together and I’d only just set this place up for me.” 

His hand leaves Kun’s wrist, using it to gesture to the studio apartment at large-- the massive sofa that’s long enough to accommodate all 6”1’ of Johnny’s height, the clock that ticks away with no numbers (a choice Kun had been irrationally annoyed by for no other reason than the lack of precision for the minute hand), the square table Johnny has that can fold out into a rectangular one--something Kun had researched and Johnny had been so excited about. 

It’s painful to think about, that they’d gotten to the point of no return when things had, for the most part, been going smoothly. They’d argue once in a while but didn’t all couples do that? Kun had honestly thought that even if they didn’t aline perfectly on every front, that they’d somehow still work it out in the end. 

Well. About that. 

There really was an ‘end’.

“What if--what if I eased up? What if maybe I just like, dropped the ten-year plan? Try it your way,” Kun asks quietly. Even as he says it, he knows that that wouldn’t work out for either of them. He’d end up resenting Johnny, and then they’d be worse off. Friendship is already a flimsy term for what exists between them as it is. 

“Kun, do you honestly think that I’d be happy with you playing pretend for me?” Johnny asks. “Or that I’d be happy knowing how unhappy you were about the direction of where this was going?”

No, no he probably wouldn’t. They’d make each other miserable if they kept going the way that they had.

But it didn't have to be that way.

“What is it about me that doesn’t make you want to stay?” Kun's voice is steady and clear, if a little resigned. 

It’s the one question that Kun has kept shut and closed away ever since they broke up. He’d composed seven different iterations of the same question in his Notes app, thinking about sending it to Johnny on nights when he’d be lying awake at three in the morning, turning it over and over in his head, scared of the answers he wasn’t ready to face. 

“What?” Johnny asks, head whipping up. “Kun, what?”

“Was I a bad boyfriend? Did I nag you too much? Did I not open up enough?” Kun asks, unable to shut the lid on this Pandora’s box anymore now that he’s asked the biggest question, barely ready to handle being under this kind of scrutiny under Johnny’s gaze. “I just want to know what it is about me that didn’t scream ‘forever’ to you.” 

“Kun, it isn’t y--”

“Please, I am begging you to not pull an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ thing, John,” Kun says, his chest starting to hurt. His entire body is going into overdrive, like those scenes in sci-fi movies where the engine to the ship has been shot down to hell and the alarm system is going on full throttle and some British lady’s voice is going ‘Warning: Emergency systems have been compromised. Warning: Emergency systems have been compromised” or some shit. 

And yet here he remains, seated, digging a hole for himself. 

“But it really isn’t you,” Johnny pushes forward anyway. “It’s you in relation to me, sure, but there’s a difference. It isn’t that I don’t see forever with you, Kun, it’s that I don’t even know what forever entails for me yet. It’s too big, and I wish I was the kind of person who thought he was ready for it, but the last thing I want to do is string you along and make you feel like it was for nothing.” 

Kun bites the inside of his cheek, knowing full well that the last line wasn’t meant to hurt him, knowing full well that the last line is something that had hurt Johnny, when Kun himself had thrown it out in anger, telling him that he’d wasted Kun’s time. 

It wasn’t true. 

It still isn’t true. 

“You’ve never wasted my time,” Kun says. His voice is soft, carrying over the music still playing behind him. “The last two years haven’t been a waste of time.”

“That’s not what you said las--”

“I know. I know. I didn’t mean it.” 

Kun pours himself another glass of water, and raises it to his lips. He wonders if Johnny sees the tremor in his hands. 

They’d sat at this very table that night for an hour before the fight had escalated, moving into the living room with Johnny running his hand furiously over his face, his cheeks red from the shouting. Kun had walked over, his words acid, wanting it to hurt, wanting Johnny to keep firing back instead of the flippant halfhearted answers he’d been giving Kun all week. 

It had made Kun feel crazy, unhinged, like all of a sudden, all the effort he’d put into Johnny’s birthday surprise, into their anniversary dinner, his research into the museums that Johnny could look into applying to filed in a folder that he was going to pull out in case Johnny showed interest, the fact that Johnny had introduced Kun to his parents and Kun was planning his coming out to his own--all of it down the drain. 

The month has been difficult but it’s been enlightening. He knows that now at least.

“I wanted it to hurt you,” Kun says. “I wanted to pull out all the stops, to make you realize that you were losing the best thing you ever had.”

“Kun, do you think I haven’t known that this entire time?” Johnny asks sadly. “Sometimes you feel so far out of my league that I can’t help but be slapped in the face with the reality of it. You are the best damn thing in my life and I don’t want to keep weighing you down with my indecision and this massive fear of the future.” 

A few months into their relationship, Johnny had come over to Kun’s apartment and they’d sat up against the headboard of Kun’s double bed and Johnny had set his laptop up so they could watch a documentary about a man who had walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in New York. 

Kun remembers thinking he was insane for doing that. It was illegal, dangerous, had every single thing stacked against him, all for what he’d thought was a gimmick, but before he could voice it out to Johnny, he’d seen Johnny wipe a tear away before sniffling, and then pulling himself together again. 

“Are you okay?” Kun had asked, turning to face Johnny, lifting his hand to cup Johnny’s jaw, his thumb wiping away another errant tear. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Johnny had laughed, watery and embarrassed. “Sorry! That wasn’t supposed to make me cry, what the fuck!”

“Why are you crying, baby?” Kun’s body had been angled now so he could take Johnny’s face in both his hands. 

“It’s just overwhelming,” he’d replied. “The single-minded focus, the dedication required to pull off something that had so many things that could have gone wrong. It’s admirable.” 

Kun had smiled, filled with affection, before pressing a kiss to Johnny’s forehead. The rest of the memory is murky to Kun, just that he knows Johnny’s had spent the night and that he’d fucked into Kun nice and slow hours after they’d finished the movie. 

“I don’t know why we’re doing this to ourselves when we clearly still care for each other,” Kun says finally after Johnny’s words settle into the back of his head. “Why are we complicating things?”

“Because we’re both too stubborn for our own good and too set in our ways for it to be--”

“What, worth it?” Kun interjects, unable to keep the bitterness from coloring his voice. 

“Easy, is what I was going to say, actually,” Johnny says cooly. He’s trying to not rise to Kun’s bait. Kun swallows his words, counts to five, exhales. 

“It doesn’t have to be easy,” Kun says. “Relationships aren’t always easy.” 

“They’re not supposed to be so difficult, either,” Johnny replies. “Every time I’ve considered calling you this month to ask you to come over has ended with me just remembering the disappointment in your eyes every time I did something that didn’t live up to whatever sort of expectation you had of me in your head. I didn’t want to keep letting you down, Kun.”

“You didn’t keep letting me down, Johnny,” Kun says. 

“You say this now.” 

“It’s true though,” Kun replies. “I was happy with you. I thought you felt the same. I didn’t realize that you were seeing something in my eyes that you thought registered as _disappointment_ but I wish you had actually asked me about it instead of arriving at this conclusion in your head that that is what it was.”

Johnny’s mouth snaps shut. Kun watches him work his jaw, clenched tight as Johnny tries to find something to say. 

“I’m going to say something, and I want you to listen to me very, very clearly,” Kun says, trying to steady his voice. “The truest thing, the stuff that I’ve always held back from saying. Is that okay?”

Johnny holds his hand up, pours a finger of whiskey, and knocks it back before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Okay,” Johnny says. Kun steels himself. 

“Contrary to what you seem to have assumed about me, I haven’t spent the last nearly two years just thinking about the things you do that disappoint me. Sure, we’ve fought over a shitload of stuff but I wanted to believe that those were the growing pains of learning to navigate loving someone. Being in a relationship with you may not have been the magical effortless dream we intended for it to be, but loving you was-- is,” Kun says in one breath. “Loving you is.” 

Johnny keeps his mouth shut, but looks up at Kun with these massive eyes that tell Kun to keep going. 

“It stresses me out that you’re not as stringent with time as I am, and that you flake out once in a while because your head’s a mess, but those weren’t deal-breakers for me, Johnny,” Kun continues. “My head’s a mess too, sometimes. I don’t always have everything figured out, and sure yeah, maybe I should have been better at actually saying that, but I also wish you had been better about asking, too.” 

Kun feels the curl of the whiskey making his tongue heavier, making him sit up straighter, making him feel a little braver. 

“I’ve tried holding on to being angry at you for this breakup but I can’t even do that for too long,” Kun says. “Do you know how frustrating that is? That after all of this, I still want you, I still want to be with you? Because I know that if we gave it another shot, we’d be better at it.” 

Outside, thunder rumbles loud and long, the rain spattering against the window, hidden behind the thing grey curtains Johnny had matched with his couch. 

“But I need you to be clear with me,” Kun says. “Did you actually love me?”

Johnny frowns at him, and his eyes are the most hurt Kun has ever seen, almost the same expression that's greeted Kun in the mirror every morning for the last 32 days. 

“How can you even ask me this?” Johnny rasps out, his body angled towards Kun but with his elbows back on the table, his hands clasped together, forehead pressed to them like he’s in prayer. His voice is wrecked. Kun waits. “I _do_ , actually, love you.” 

Kun had known, but he needed to hear it again, needed this reaffirmation that he didn’t make the last two years up in his head. Everything’s a mess inside of him, all these emotions threatening to rise up in his throat again. 

Things crest and fall wave after wave, and Kun feels his body move of its own accord. The warning bells in his head reach a fever pitch, but he rises from his seat, and gets on his knees, and Johnny’s eyes widen.

“Kun--”

“I’m not on my knees to beg,” Kun says quietly, the hardwood floor agonizing beneath him, but he straightens his back out, looking up at Johnny, his hands loose at his side.

“Can I touch you?” Kun’s heart goes from zero to sixty, his breath coming in shallow pants. Fleetingly, he wonders if he could go into cardiac arrest from this alone, this close proximity.

Johnny’s struck wordless, his face searching Kun’s face, before landing on Kun’s lips so briefly that if Kun hadn’t been watching, he would have missed it altogether. He nods, once.

Kun rests his hands on Johnny’s thighs, lightly, without pressure, the points of contact searing beneath his palms and the skin peeking between the rips in Johnny’s jeans.

“You still love me?” Kun asks, sliding his palms up slowly, centimeter by centimeter. 

“I do love you.” Johnny’s voice is wrecked, his expression devastating, longing written all over it. 

“You still want me?” Kun asks, looking Johnny directly in the eye. 

Kun had always wondered how a tightrope was capable of not snapping under the weight of whoever was on it. How did one ensure that the knots you were using on either end were secure enough to not have you tumbling down into a 540-meter drop?

Johnny’s lips on his feel like how Kun imagines a free-fall would feel. He surges up to meet Johnny, lips crashing into teeth clacking into teeth, and Kun is pretty sure he’s split his lip or something because iron floods his mouth, but Johnny’s tongue is insistent, claiming, and Kun’s stomach feels like the ground has fallen from under him just as Johnny hauls Kun up by his arms, and in the next second, they’re both standing, feet shuffling before Kun feels the back of his skull make contact with the wall behind him, right next to Johnny’s bedroom door. 

“What are we doing?” Johnny asks, breathing heavy as Kun silences him with more kisses, desperation in his movements as his hands roam Kun’s body. “Kun, Kun, what are we doing?” 

“Making up for lost time,” Kun says, hand on the back of Johnny’s neck, thumb brushing against the cropped hair near Johnny’s nape. “I still want you and you still want me and that’s all I care about right now. The rest is noise.”

The warning sirens have quieted to pure silence, the only noise his ears register are those of the sloppy kisses that they share. Johnny towers over Kun and Kun stands on tip-toes in an attempt to offset it, arms wound around Johnny’s neck as he holds him close. 

This is reckless. This is the most reckless thing Kun has ever done, save for making the decision to come here in the first place, and for once he allows himself to shut his systems off, go with it, not be so in his fucking head so much. They both could do with getting out of their heads, honestly. 

Johnny mouths at Kun’s neck and Kun gasps as deft fingers start undoing the buttons on his shirt one by one, lips following the path that slowly presents itself. 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Johnny asks when he’s kissed Kun’s lips again, forehead pressing against Kun’s. “I need you to be sure because I don’t know if I can keep pretending I’m not this far gone for you, Kun.” 

Kun takes Johnny by the front of his shirt and pushes off the wall, walking backward to where he knows Johnny’s bed is. The storm has calmed to a gentle rainfall, and the room is bathed in blue and a tinge of orange from the small lamp on Johnny’s desk. 

“I want to do this,” Kun says, and they both know how much weight the statement carries. This, being in Johnny’s arms. This, spending the night. This, taking steps to figure out the future together without trying to speed it up so much, or take it too slowly.

They fumble their way through the room, the door closing behind Johnny loudly.

Johnny makes a wounded sound when he kisses Kun again and guides Kun back to the bed he’s spent countless nights in, the mattress comfortable under him, reminding him of rest and romance and being cherished. Longing lodges itself somewhere near Kun’s diaphragm, growing and spreading into his lungs, his limbs as he and Johnny undress.

The memory foam pillow that Kun rests his head on sinks as Johnny maneuvers them properly on his bed, naked skin on naked skin, trailing his tongue from Kun’s clavicle to his chin, and it’s immense, the difference between this time together and all their others. 

Johnny makes quick work of unraveling Kun’s body in the ways he knows best, spit and lube making their way inside of him as Johnny loosens him up and Kun has his hands buried in Johnny’s hair, insistent lips seeking purchase over heated, golden skin, over the black ink suspended in vines along Johnny’s shoulder. 

When Johnny slips a condom on and pushes into Kun, inch by inch, Kun cries out, his body forgetting just how _much_ there was of Johnny to take, pain spiking before Johnny’s hand finds its way between Kun’s legs until all Kun remembers is arousal and rapture. 

Kun’s mind makes every sensation feel sacred, like Johnny whispering “I’m sorry” and “I love you” are fleeting things that he needs to hold in his hands. When two of Johnny’s fingers find their way into Kun’s mouth, Kun laves at the digits, sliding his tongue in between the appendages, teeth raking across the pads, sucking hard enough to remind Johnny just how good he actually is with his mouth. 

Legs wrap around Johnny’s waist, arms holding Johnny’s close, and wildly, embarrassingly, Kun’s mind supplies that Johnny is making love to him, but he can’t even bring himself to cringe at the thought when every press into him and against his prostate has Kun crying out, and then crying. 

Johnny pulls back when he hears the sniffle, and Kun wants to hide, turns his face into the pillow and uses his hand to cover his eyes, tears streaking down the side of his face, but a hand on his jaw has Kun facing Johnny, a thumb under Kun’s eye to wipe his tears away. 

Johnny says nothing, just presses his forehead to Kun’s and changes the angle of his hips, his hand tracing a path from Kun’s jaw down to his chest and then along Kun’s thigh to hitch it up higher. 

Kun holds on to Johnny like he’ll vanish in his arms, blunt nails raking against the vast expanse of unmarred skin on Johnny’s back, making Johnny hiss, most likely from the sting of it.

“I’ve got you,” Johnny whispers, hips unrelenting, lips soft on Kun’s cheek. “I’m right here.”

Kun gasps out, arms flying to the mattress to grip at the sheets, Johnny moving to sit on his haunches, changing the angle and the pace, and it’s madness, it’s so fucking unreal how Kun’s vision whites out, pleasure between his legs, pleasure curling into the base of his skull, his spine until he screams, uncaring of the neighbors or propriety when he feels it in his bones, feels it lodged in his throat while he explodes across his own belly, his own chest. 

Johnny’s grip on the backs of his thighs tighten as his hips stutter and Kun’s prostate continues to take a beating, and Kun knows he’s close, still remembers all the tells even if one month had felt like a decade. He’s reaching out with his hands, Johnny’s fingers slipping in between Kun’s own while Johnny pins both Kun’s hands above his head, and Kun whispers, “Finish inside me, John,” and Johnny is done-for.

"Fuck, Jesus, Kun," Johnny groans, falling forward and bracing himself on his outstretched arms, his eyes locked on Kun's, the air thick and heated between them, and Johnny pushes in, holding himself there as his orgasm washes over him. Kun clenches around Johnny tight, bearing down and releasing before Johnny eases himself low, lower, lips sliding over Kun's own, his kisses more gentle now that they've both come.

It's a harmony of breath and sighing when Johnny eases himself out of Kun, and from between his legs, kneeling as he pulls the condom off and ties it off to toss in the bin next to his side table. Kun watches his every movement, lying sated against Johnny's sheets, this scene both familiar, and wholly new.

There's a moment that passes, just as Johnny moves from where he's kneeling to lying down next to Kun, where Johnny is framed by the errant lightning strike outside his window, and Kun thinks that Johnny is devastating in all the best ways.

Johnny fits himself between the wall and Kun, his left arm outstretched as a gesture for Kun to fit himself there. There's a faint hint of Johnny's BO under what his deodorant can no longer mask. On Johnny's neck, the last notes of his perfume linger. Kun lies on his side, his shoulder fitting into Johnny's armpit, uncaring of the hair there that tickles Kun's skin. His ear rests where clavicle meets humerus, bounded by muscle that Johnny's worked all month to develop.

Even in this, as his fingers dance over Johnny's bare chest, playfully flicking at Johnny's nipple while Johnny's eyes keep searching Kun's face, Kun is aware that Johnny's body has changed, but still feels familiar. Kun moves slowly and lodges his thigh in between both of Johnny's, the soft velvet of Johnny's sex warm on his skin.

Kun’s hand skirts over the fine hair that tracks up from pelvis to belly button, up in the valley between Johnny's pecs, finding its resting place and landing lightly over Johnny's neck where Kun feels him swallow, Adam's apple bobbing from the motion.

"Do you regret this?" comes Johnny's timid whisper in the darkness amidst the background of still-steady rainfall.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Kun whispers, “No.”

Kun traces the bow of Johnny's lips with his eyes, watching Johnny watch him for an answer. Beneath his hand, Johnny's pulse races. Kun smooths his hand over Johnny's skin to calm him, a counterbalance to the precariousness of what he feels blossoming between them.

"Stay," Johnny says. Stay, here in my arms. Stay, here for the night. Stay, here for good.

Kun moves his hand to curl over the edge of Johnny's ribs, to drape himself over Johnny's chest, resting his cheek over where Johnny's heart thud-thud-thuds.

Kun finds himself standing at the crossroads of where this life and this relationship could go, and he decides that wherever that is, he'd like to be able to see it through with a single-minded focus and dedication as well--even if there are so many things that could go wrong. He'll go anywhere Johnny takes him, learn how to bend, be patient as Johnny learns the same. 

"Okay," Kun whispers before pressing a soft kiss to Johnny's skin. "I'll stay."

**Author's Note:**

> A few notes:  
> 1\. The documentary Kun and Johnny watch is called Man on Wire (2008), and it's a fantastic story that is beautifully told, just in case you're wondering. 
> 
> 2\. Yes I made Leon Johnny's cat I just love Leon so much
> 
> Find me at [my carrd, made by the lovely Erin.](https://t.co/Nm5AvDvn2U)


End file.
